jay

For the 25th man, I'd prefer some type of a specialist -- speed, defense or power -- as opposed to a backup to the backups (ie Nunez). I will say though that a Nunez is a slight improvement over the likes of a Bartlett.

What happened to the DH spot?

If Sano, Vargas, Arcia, Mauer and Plouffe are all Twins, one of them has to play the OF corner opposite Arcia. The math is pretty easy to figure that one out. Which of Sano, Mauer and Plouffe would make the best RFer? All 3 guys have the arm for it. Plouffe probably runs the best. Cuddyer, part deux?

Neat. The best parts were the most detailed parts -- talking about pretending to be Twins in the backyard and thinking about how in the heck to get out a lineup full of Rangers All-Stars. Drive that type of detail throughout the video and it'd be a few notches better, imo.

The collective barf in this thread is going to be quite the mess to clean up. Good luck in the 'pen, Pelf.

Great analysis! I'm with you 100%. The only thing I'd add to your second point is that we only looked at first-round picks here. But, your point is right that the Twins would have had to somehow lead the league in total actual WAR from those picks to pick up +60 WAR. That would equate to a "pick efficiency" ratio of almost 3... something ZERO teams did. If they had gotten into the top 5 in "pick efficiency", they would have picked up something like 30 WAR. That still leaves plenty of gap to fill just to reach .500...

Neat idea... basically just replace expected WAR with draft bonus dollars. Probably need to adjust for inflation, but that's doable. Anyone know where to find draft bonus data? It'd be easy to plug in to my sheet.

To be fair, the % of HS picks making it to MLB from this pool is bound to improve a bit with some big prospect names still out there from 2010 and 2011. Taillon, Zach Lee, Syndergaard, Owens, Guerrieri, Bradley to name a few -- all HS picks.

Thanks, tobi. Good insights. Cain got left out here (like you noted) and Strasburg went to San Diego St, but here are the numbers for HS vs College pitchers from 2003-2011 using the same methods: College pitchers - 133 total picks, 368.3 Actual WAR vs 324.35 Expected WAR HS pitchers - 91 total picks, 171.4 Actual WAR vs 157.2 Expected WAR College pitchers hold a slight edge here in "pick efficiency", which is actually more pronounced over bigger samples of college vs HS picks if you look at Sky Andrecheck's research: http://baseballanalysts.com/archives/2009/06/the_draft_and_w.php There's a common perception that HS players are more boom or bust compared to safer college players (which I've held as well). That didn't show up much within this limited data set. 10 college pitchers and 6 HS pitchers have > 10 WAR, 7.5% and 6.5% respectively from each group. That changes to 4.5% and 1.1% (Kershaw) if you raise the bar to 20 WAR. However, on the measure of simply making it to MLB, the two groups showed a big split -- 70% of the college picks made it to MLB whlie only 47% of the HS picks did.

Alright, here's the blog with some number-crunching analysis: http://twinsdaily.com/blog/237/entry-6328-comparing-first-round-draft-pick-performance/ To summarize, the total WAR from Twins first round draft picks (2003-2011) after accounting for draft position and total number of picks should have been right at league average. The results came in a bit below that, but not at the bottom of the league.

First, the results. Then, how in the heck I got them. We’ll use Wins Above Replacement (WAR) to assess how well the Twins have drafted in the first round from 2003 to 2011 compared to the rest of the league. From 2003-2011, the Twins’ first-round picks were: 23rd in expected WAR per pick. This is an indication of their consistently low draft position due to successful teams and supplemental round picks. 15th in total expected WAR. The Twins make up ground here due to the additional picks they gained in the supplemental round as compensation for losing free agents. 19th in actual WAR generated. The Twins draft picks from 2003-2011 have produced WAR at a lower rate than the league average. 19th in pick efficiency. This most directly ties to “how well they drafted” after accounting for both draft position and total number of picks. I’m defining pick efficiency as the ratio of actual WAR to expected WAR. This has certainly had an impact on the poor results we’ve seen out of the team from 2011-2014. Many other avenues of talent acquisition exist, but for teams like the Twins and many others, the acquisition of amateurs plays a large role. The draft goes much deeper than the first round, but failing to get significant production there can be quite the challenge to overcome. It’s amazing how a Mike Trout or a Clayton Kershaw can make your team look good at first round draft picks, as seen by the Angels and Dodgers. The Red Sox did poorly from 2006 going forward as shown in Parker’s recent analysis, but they get credit for Jacoby Ellsbury and a few others here. The Diamondbacks did well, but traded away Scherzer, J. Upton and Stephen Drew – their top 3 performing picks. You might also notice a pretty strong correlation between the teams at the bottom of the list and the teams that have stunk in recent years. Sure would hate to be a Phillies fan – that organization has managed to get negative WAR out of their first rounds picks – yow-ouuch. The Twins didn’t hit any homers with their first round picks in this timeframe. However, expectations needed to be tempered in the first place. They’ve underperformed even to that lowered standard, but this analysis doesn’t show them to be among the very worst either. Smack-dab middle of the pack in total expected WAR + below average pick efficiency + trading away the draft pick that represented over a third of the actual WAR generated (Garza) for a terrible left fielder = very little visible MLB production for the Twins out of the 2003-2011 first round picks. ***************** Now, for those so inclined, the approach. Over the last decade, a number of extremely smart statistical researchers have explored the value of draft picks. I am not one of them. For simplicity, I decided to use the figures created by Andrew Ball (which are quite similar to others out there): Tier 1 – Pick #1 Expected WAR = 11.83 Tier 2 – Pick #2 Expected WAR = 10.09 Tier 3 – Pick #3-7 Expected WAR = 5.37 Tier 4 – Pick #8-15 Expected WAR = 5.21 Tier 5 – Pick #16-30 Expected WAR = 2.65 Tier 6 – Pick #31-60 Expected WAR = 1.41 It is important to note that the expected WAR figures represent only the first 6 years of a player’s career. This is done with the expectation that teams are paying market rates for players that have reached free agency and their draft value has been expended. Data on first round draft picks and the WAR they have generated was collected from Baseball Reference. I wanted the results here to reflect on the struggles from 2011-2014, so I intentionally didn’t go any further back than 2003 because those players had largely used up their first six years early in that period or before it. An argument could be made to include the 2002 class since most of the big names wouldn't have reached free agency until the 2013 season (Greinke, Hamels, Cain, BJ Upton), but I’ve excluded them. Note that this leaves out Denard Span from 2002 and Joe Mauer from 2001, both resounding successes of first-round picks. With our time frame selected and the expected values defined, I tried to account for the fact that the more recent draft years are unlikely to have utilized all of their pre-free agency years by discounting the expected WAR for those more recent draft classes. The expected WAR in the first 6 years for the 2007-2011 draft classes were reduced by the following factors: 2011 = 1/6 2010 = 2/6 2009 = 3/6 2008 = 4/6 2007 = 5/6 This factoring isn’t perfect, as players come up at different rates, but the ratios of actual to expected WAR within the draft class stay reasonably steady at these rates. This discounting is actually a benefit for teams that have already gotten MLB production from these recent draft classes, which seems fine to me with our goal of assessing impact on the 2011-2014 seasons. We also might get some WAR from the older draft classes beyond their first 6 years. To adjust for this, I looked at the individual players in the 2003-2005 classes with more than 5 career WAR, looked up their stats on BRef and reduced their WAR by any amounts earned beyond 6 years (this sounds like a lot of work, but it was really only like 20 guys). In looking through the data, I’m satisfied that we’re at least close enough to get a good gauge of team drafting performance. If you’ve made it this far, I’d be happy to share the Excel file with anyone interested (send me a PM with your email). I’ve also done some analysis specific to the Twins’ picks and whether or not they made it to MLB in relation to league averages, so I might follow up with that. I hope the info here provides some help in assessing the Twins’ recent first round draft performance. Thanks in advance for your comments, insights and feedback. Photo credit to Mizzou Media Relations

If we're trying to look for causes of sucking so bad for the last four years (2011-2014), what are the right draft years to look at? I'm thinking 2003-2009. Before 2003, those guys have mostly all used up their six-years of arb control by early in our downturn. After 2009, it's very TBD (but to be transparent, the Twins top picks don't look promising in '10 or '11).

This is completely in line with what I've found so far in the analysis I'm working on. The Twins should have expected below average results based on their draft position, but the results have been even further below that.

I get the Parmelee and Boyd storylines for choosing 2006-2011, but the data presented here isn't the best choice for correlating to the terrible team performance from 2011-2014. Plenty of big time prospects from the '11 and even the '10 classes haven't even debuted yet (especially the HS picks) and players from before 2006 are still big-time contributors. The more relevant previous drafts don't look much better, so no, that's not an attempt to justify or defend anything. The premise and results would be largely the same, but let's at least look at the right window and the right data if we're going to relate it to the losses.

Other teams wouldn't have the same number of expected WAR. That figure is dependent on both the number of draft picks and the position of those draft picks. The whole point is that it's not apples to apples and you can't use a median to accurately compare.

Lol... this is the blog post I'm drafting right now in far fewer words.

Didn't intend anything about causes for desire to visit the site. My intent from that specific line was that without more analysis on the "why", it's too easy to simplify the explanation. The Twins didn't get great results out of those top draft picks. That's clearly a problem and there's nothing wrong with pointing it out. When I see a problem, I look for justifiable explanations and/or solutions. I'm curious to see whether draft position provides a sufficient explanation on its' own or not.

I'm absolutely not saying we should ignore the bad or the negative, so please don't insinuate that from my post. What I'm saying is that I think it's far more valuable to understand "why" and we don't have any of that in the article. I'd be happy to hear your theories on what should have been done differently... other than just pick the guys that actually ended up making it.

That's the fact as of today. As your post there and others have pointed out, it's the why that is hard to separate out from all the variables. The icky feeling I get from the original article is that folks coming to TD to just read articles are probably pretty likely to leave with the conclusion that the Twins just suck at drafting. I think the why is a bit more complex than that. I personally think draft position is a big part of those years and I'll commit to a blog post examining that.

I don't think anyone disagrees about the impact of the draft and that it's a big part of the "why" to our recent terrible teams. That's an easy conclusion. The next question of "why didn't we find better talent those years" is far more interesting to me.

The Twins draft struggles in that period are directly related to the results we've seen the last few years. However, I would've liked to see you weight for draft position. There's some anecdotal mentions of it, but no data analysis. Knowing the huge variation in expected success rates for a top-5 pick compared to a compensation pick, I think the impact is underrepresented here. I think '06 and '11 were your cutoff points due to Parms and Boyd, but it's interesting to see Garza, Perkins and Plouffe in the two years before that and, whlie they haven't made an MLB impact yet, Buxton and Berrios in 2012.

It would be curious to hear someone from the Twins org opine on what they value in catcher defense. It's certainly not framing and it seems that blocking matters a lot.

No, he doesn't. That's an old, lazy cliche. He hit into a DP in 11.3% of such opportunities to do so last year. That's less than both Carlos Gomez and Ben Revere. He's almost an ideal #2 hitter.

I'm with you, Nick. Except... Tony Plush, err, Nyjer Morgan. Scratch him from any CF options pleeez. He signed a deal in Korea a few weeks ago and has had 41 ABs the last two seasons. He's not an MLB option despite a recognizable name. As you mentioned though, hard to see where it won't be Schafer and/or Hicks.

Someone mentioned Cuddyer's nice signature earlier and it reminded me of this Killebrew-inspired story that he started signing that way because of a Killebrew scolding: http://minnesota.sbnation.com/minnesota-twins/2011/5/17/2176192/michael-cuddyer-reminisces-about-harmon-killebrew I also learned in a different article about the signature story that Cuddyer wore #3 with the Rockies to honor Harmon. Neat. As a third, semi-related point... I've always man-crushed on that Cuddy-Buddy Mikey Baseball.